Traditionally, people have experienced their home computers in a different way than they have their televisions. In particular, users have received broadcast content over their televisions, and have received Internet media content such as videos, photographs, music and audio files over their computers. However, there has been a recent push to merge the two experiences. More and more, people are using their televisions to receive traditional Internet content and their computers to receive traditional broadcast content.
One area that has remained largely within the purview of computers is that of Internet navigation and media searches. A reason for this is that traditional set top boxes (STB) used to receive television content have not been equipped with the processing power or browsing capabilities that typical computers have. One example of this is that set top boxes are able to play back only a limited number of the wide variety of media file formats that exist. Video files are encoded as Windows media video (WMV), flash video (FLV), MPEG video files, and many other formats. Audio files are encoded as Windows media audio (WMA), waveform audio format (WAV), and MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3) to name a few. And graphics files are stored as JPGs, GIFs, TIFs, etc. Conventional set top boxes support only a limited number of formats for each type of media.
While client devices such as set top boxes do have some Internet searching capabilities and are able to play back some types of media files, these abilities are limited. It is certainly possible to provide set top boxes with the same processing power and browsing capabilities as traditional PC computers. However, this would significantly add to the cost of set top boxes. Adding cost to set top boxes is contrary to the current trend, which is to provide set top boxes with the functionality of handling broadcast and certain types of downloaded content, but to otherwise keep them simple and inexpensive. Thus, in order to experience the wide variety of media files available over the World Wide Web, users still turn to their computers.
On the other hand, an area which has remained primarily within the purview of television is the ability to receive content without the user having to actively seek out and select all of the content they receive. While users can surf the web using their computer and receive only the content they are interested in, at the completion of one content piece, the user must actively select another content piece. Conversely, with television, a user can tune into a channel and then sit back and receive an unending flow of content selected by the broadcasters. While broadcasters offer a wide variety of content, users are not always able to find a channel broadcasting the particular content that the user is interested in.